Less far than I can throw you
by mayachain
Summary: After a year off the job, Dom must tackle his first legal extraction since Mal's death, his daughter's abandonment issues, and the fallout from breaking Arthur's and Eames' trust.


**Less far than I can throw you**

::

::

Once he's back in the States, Dom takes a year off. He gets reacquainted with Philippa and James. They've been through so much, and they deserve their father's full attention. Arthur comes to visit once a month. Dom is relieved – they really lived in each other's pockets for a while there, he's not sure what he'd do if Arthur didn't want to stay in touch.

Miles and his wife come to celebrate Christmas. The morning they are bound to leave, the doorbell rings, and Dom opens the door to Ariadne. "There's something I want the Professor to see," she claims, but no one expects Dom to stay out of his study. Soon, the three of them are deep into an evaluation of her project. Miles, Marie and Ariadne almost miss their flight.

Dom starts building again. Only in his waking mind, only on paper and on the computer. Arthur has their PASIV, and Dom knows better than to venture into the world of dreams on his own.

His memories of Mal slowly reassert themselves. With her projection haunting his every dream, she was never far from his thoughts, but it's different, now. Now, playing with and reading to and just plain watching Philippa and James, living in their house, there is peace in memories of the woman Mal was before it all went wrong. Dom knows they will fade, but that is part of moving on, and move on is what he must do, has done, for his children.

Philippa starts school. Dom agonizes for over a month, but in the end, he gives in and allows James to join the local kindergarten. It's the right decision – for a long time after Mal died and he disappeared, his children didn't have a lot of friends.

The next time Arthur visits, he spends a whole day browsing through Dom's architecture files. He doesn't outright _say_ that he is impressed – Dom has only ever heard him utter words to that effect once, and that was to Eames. Still, Arthur must like what he sees: When he comes back from putting Philippa to bed, he says, "There are people who would be interested. Right here in the States, legitimate work."

Dom is not sure what Arthur did during this past year. Recovered from a life on the run, he guesses, spent some of Saito's money, kept in touch with Ariadne. That one staircase Dom had seen in the simulation after Christmas had clearly spoken of Arthur's influence. The PASIV must have seen some use, Arthur had worked too hard for his reputation as a point-man to drop out of the business and never be seen again. By the end, he had been as weary of the criminal lifestyle as Dom had been, though. It's not exactly a surprise he'd prefer legal jobs for now.

This past year, money has not _yet_ been a problem. Saito's machinations not only had the murder charge dropped, they also gave Dom access to Mal's life insurance, but most of that went directly to Dom's lawyers and the childrens' college funds. Dom never saw a penny of the fortune the others made from Robert Fischer's Inception. His share went to Yusuf, which was all he could think to do at the time. Seeing as ultimately, it reunited him with his children, Dom cannot regret it.

The Cobb household is going to need some kind of income soon. Moreover, though he appreciates the natural dreams that have sifted into his sleep again, Dom has missed Dreaming. "Tell me," he says.

The jobs Arthur describes are mostly straightforward. In contrast to everything Dom had grown used to while offering his services on the run, all of them come with the mark's cooperation. A man wanting to prove to his wife that his affair with his secretary only exists in her imagination. A lesbian couple believing that proving the one with a record hasn't even thought of using drugs since she left college ten years ago will help their chances for successful adoption. An Alzheimer's ridden woman wanting to find out where she herself hid a precious heirloom.

Arthur doesn't have to point out that the last one is both the most interesting and the most difficult. Due to the fragile state of the woman's mind, it's also the most urgent. When Dom waits to see if there are any more on the list and then says, "Mrs Herscovitz," Arthur doesn't look the least bit surprised.

_Dom_ is not surprised that Arthur has already done the necessary research.

What _does_ surprise him when he goes through the files Arthur hands him is that apart from the actual architecture, the entire job is already planned out.

The necklace should already be on the clients' mind, but to be sure, they'll use the first level to remind her of how important it is. Since they can't be sure beforehand of how lucid she'll be and what state her subconscious will be in subsequently, they'll fill the first level with five different locations and potentially recreate five different scenes. "The day she was told the necklace's story, the first time she was allowed to wear it, her wedding day, the day she told the story to her niece, and the day her husband thought he'd lost it," Arthur recites. "If we're lucky, we'll find out where she put it by playing out the last one and won't need to go into the second level at all."

"We can't count on whether or not she'll even remember her husband," Dom says, "not even if she's able to tell us his name before we hook her up to the PASIV."

"She's fairly stable at the moment because she can afford cutting edge medicine," Arthur says, pointing to a stack of photographs accompanying detailed descriptions. "That's how she was able to contact the right people, and to give me all this helpful information. But yes, what we'll actually find is completely unpredictable."

One of the scenarios should take, however, especially since they're going to talk to her about it beforehand. If the best case fails, give her something to fall asleep, and ask her to search for the necklace in a second-level dream version of her current house. Arthur has covered all eventualities, but they don't expect resistance; every scrap of paper in the room should be showing the directions.

There are only two aspects that Arthur's extensive file doesn't cover. "If we're going to do this, we'll have to use a customized compound to mesh with her medication, and have someone who can impersonate her aunt, her niece, her husband. We're going to need Yusuf and Eames."

::

::

Conveniently enough, Arthur already has the phone numbers Eames and Yusuf currently use. "It might be better if _I_ called Eames," Arthur cautions, but Arthur has already done so much, Dom feels the need to contribute something.

"I'll call them," he says. Arthur gives him a weird look – Dom isn't used to be unable to interpret his point man's looks, but they don't live in each other's pockets anymore, so he just frowns and then dismisses it. With some reluctance, Arthur sends the numbers to Dom's phone.

"You won't need to go under with us," Dom reassures Yusuf when the man proves hesitant. "What's more, the legal risk is pretty much non-existent, plus we don't need to give the client your name if you don't want it known."

In the end, Yusuf agrees to fly in for the job fairly quickly. _"What a challenge!"_ he enthuses once he gives Dom the chance to explain what will be required of him. Besides, his private lab is always in need of more funding.

"That went well," Arthur comments when Dom hangs up. "Should I…?" Dom is already dialing Eames.

"Mr Eames, it's Cobb," he says. "I have a legit but challenging offer for you."

_"Cobb, is it?"_ says Eames' voice from some unidentified place across the globe. _"How nice of you to think of me. However, I fear you must excuse me. This is not a good time."_ The connection is broken before Dom can so much as open his mouth.

"Bad timing," Dom tells Arthur. "Let's think about Mrs Herscovitz' living room." Arthur shakes his head, but he doesn't say anything. Soon, they're bending their heads over the photographs Arthur took at their client's house and discussing how to change the interior without distorting possible hiding places.

_"Terribly sorry, Mr Cobb, but I have no time for your ventures at the moment,"_ Eames says the second time Dom calls him. Dom barely has time to note the decidedly strained tone before, one again, he's left with the dialing tone.

If Eames were in a tight spot, he'd have switched his phone off. "Must be some game," Dom muses. "I'd really like to have him on board before I go to bed, though."

"Have you considered that maybe Eames doesn't want to speak to you?" Arthur asks, not looking up from his notes.

"On the phone, you mean? It's not like I wouldn't go visit in person, I just can't leave James and Philippa alone."

Arthur mutters something unintelligible, but it doesn't sound as if he thinks Dom should up and leave his children, so Dom resolves to simply wait another hour and then try again.

An hour later, though, Eames snarls, _"There's no other way to say this – don't call this number again!"_ After that, he won't even answer his phone.

"I told you _I_ should have called Eames," Arthur says in a tone of voice he normally reserves for an ill-tempered James. Then, switching to dead serious without warning, "He won't work for you."

_Of course not,_ Dom almost retorts. For all that he's usually content to let Dom run the operation, Eames never really works _for_ anyone. Like Arthur before he and Dom became partners on a permanent basis, he works _with_ people, the distinction justified by his brilliance. Arthur knows Dom knows this, though, knows it's one of the reasons Dom risked his life travelling to Mombasa. If Arthur thinks he needs to make a point now…

"Why not?"

"Why not?" Arthur repeats. "After… Are you serious?"

"Yes!" Dom exclaims, bewildered and frustrated.

Arthur stares at him for another moment, then shakes his head. "Eames is in Vegas," he says, which does nothing to answer Dom's question. "I doubt he'll take my calls after your little stunt, so I'm gonna go get him." He gathers his things and is out of the door in under a minute. "Get some sleep, send the kids to school and start with the bedroom until I'm back."

Dom stays at the table for a long time, racking his brain. Sure, there had been a few ups and downs during the last job. Sure, Dom had willfully misled his team members. But they had successfully performed an _inception_, something that no other dream sharing team had ever done before. Twice since Dom had been reunited with them, Arthur had conveyed Eames' greetings to James and Philippa. As far as Dom knows, Cobb the extractor and Eames the forger had parted on amiable terms.

It's only when he thinks about doing a test run the next morning – not that he would really hook himself up without Arthur – that he realizes Arthur has taken the case with the PASIV with him.

::

::

Yusuf arrives just as Dom is about to make his third cup of coffee. He spent the whole night on a plane, but he snags the folder with Mrs Herscovitz' medical files and starts making notes with an enthusiasm rivaling Dom's. "I mix my own drugs," is all he has to say when Dom comments on how well-rested he seems.

Somehow within the last 24 hours, Dom's private home has become the base of this operation. Since he refuses to leave the city until he absolutely has to – until the actual extraction – he guesses he can't complain. The job is legit and therefore safe. Dom's office is here, his pencils, his stationary computers. The address was never a secret, so neither Yusuf nor Eames will be learning something they couldn't have already found out. The FBI took most of Mal's private lab apart, but it's still ready-made for Yusuf to run tests in.

Dom is finished with the client's bed room and four sketches into her husband's study when Arthur returns. To Dom's relief, Eames is with him. He and Yusuf greet each other like the old acquaintances they are. When he turns away from the chemist, he shakes Dom's hand willingly enough, but he doesn't really address Dom at all, merely says, "Let's see this challenge Arthur won't shut up about then."

Whatever Arthur said to convince Eames to come, it clearly had been nothing to do with Dom.

Arthur gives Eames another folder – prepared before Dom ever announced they'd need a forger, Dom notes - and goes to take a look at the work Dom has done in his absence. Dom doesn't expect him to criticize the sketches, and he doesn't. Dom's skills as an architect were never the problem. "Looks like we should take a trip to the first level before James and Philippa come home," he murmurs.

"Impressive!" Eames comments before Dom can answer, putting his folder down. If not for the minute relaxation of the man's jaw, Dom would never have be able to tell that Arthur has been nervous at all.

Nodding at the PASIV case, gesturing for Dom to set it up, Arthur walks back to Eames. They talk too quietly for Dom to hear for a moment. He thinks he can make out "I tried to think more like you," but he must have misheard.

::

::

Building within a dream again is glorious. Dom has to repress the urge to go wild, has to fight for the strength to be professional and as focused on the job as Arthur expects.

He creates near-but-not-quite replicas of the clients' bed room and living room according to his and Arthur's specifications. Under Arthur and Eames' watchful eyes, he bends the fabric of the dream so that the doors to these two and the other three as-yet empty rooms all lead to one another. By the time he's finished, his lack of practice has soaked his shirt with sweat, but Arthur is nodding his approval, and Eames even gives him a "Well done, mate."

Dom sits down on Mrs Herscovitz' love seat to catch his breath. Eames strolls around the room and takes a good look at everything. He'll be leaving to see the client and to observe her niece, the only of the three people he's supposed to forge who is still alive. It'll be a perfect opportunity to compare Dom's set-up to reality.

Forging dead people like Mrs Herscovitz' aunt and husband would be impossible without access to the mark for details. As it is, he's confident that he can take the physical resemblance, add Mrs Herscovitz' descriptions, and fill in the rest using his intuition.

Arthur thinks it's doable. Watching Eames' body shift between lifeless copies of the client's relatives, spectacular work seeing as he's only had the photographs, Dom believes him.

::

::

He takes the afternoon off for time with James and Philippa. No matter how exciting the prospect of dreaming is, they will always come first.

"Why is there a man in Mommy's room?" Philippa asks, pointing to the door to Mal's lab. Then, noticing the larger of the two bags Eames brought, "Do you have to leave again?" Her tiny voice breaks Dom's heart.

"No, baby," he says, lifting her up so they can see eye to eye with her sitting on his lap, "No, we're having guests for a while. I'm not going anywhere." He looks for James. His little boy is investigating the bag from all sides, but he doesn't look concerned. Maybe _Dom_ should be concerned about whatever Eames might have stashed in there. However, now is not the time. Philippa is still frowning.

"He really isn't," Arthur says gently from the door. "Do you want to meet my friend Yusuf?"

Cautiously, Philippa slides out of Dom's grasp and allows Arthur to take her hand. Together they open the door to the lab, Dom and James following. Philippa brightens considerably when Yusuf waves at her, lab coat stained, hair somewhat wild, protective eyewear obscuring his face.

"You set that up, didn't you," Dom whispers to Arthur when they return to the living room. "He never looked like that in Paris."

Arthur just flashes him a rare grin and declares he and Philippa are going to do homework. Dom watches them for a while, then eyes Eames' bag and tries to figure out what to do with it. In the end, he lets James help him "carry" it up the stairs and puts it in the guest room next to Arthur's. It's probably better if it stays out of sight.

::

::

After they've put the kids to bed, Dom turns back to Mr Herscovitz' study. He and Arthur go under again to see how well it connects with the rest of the rooms. "You should reinforce the windows and the doors," Arthur says, "hopefully, the projections will stay outside."

_What outside?_ Dom thinks, but realizes in the same second that of course the windows must show a view. He brushes a curtain aside and creates a pathway between the front door and a gate, stretching it within itself so that there is no end.

"Do you see Ariadne at all?" he asks Arthur, wondering how she might approach this assignment.

"Sometimes," is all Arthur has to say. The dismissive tone reminds Dom of the fact that he doesn't actually know if Arthur has spent the past year on the right side of the law.

"Did you see Eames?" he presses, aware that he might be pushing a boundary that was never there before.

"Sometimes," Arthur says again, and Dom can't read the expression on his face at all.

That night, Dom sneaks into his office after Arthur has gone upstairs and Yusuf has stretched out on the couch. He told himself he wouldn't do this, go in alone, but he has to know if two uninterrupted turns were lucky coincidence or, as Ariadne believed and Dom himself hopes, Mal's shade is really gone.

He looks under the table and in every cupboard and drawer, but the case holding the PASIV isn't there.

::

::

Eames is back late the next afternoon. He doesn't seem to have slept much, but he joins right in the calamity of a soccer game James and Philippa are playing in the garden.

Needless to say, they instantly love him.

Eames loves their client.

"It's a real shame she'll be gone in a few years, even with the medication she's on now," he states. "You'd barely know it talking to her how sick she really is. Sure, there were a few questions that she asked several times. She didn't recall the name of our Arthur here," he toasts Arthur with the glass of milk Philippa poured him before bedtime, "but she was perfectly clear on what the job was and that she wanted it done." With a grin, he adds, "And she did ask after 'That nice young man'."

Whatever Dom was expecting, it wasn't to see Arthur almost blush.

They all go down to the first level after that. Yusuf tries to protest and Dom doesn't exactly feel comfortable doing it with his children asleep upstairs, but Eames insists because, "There's a problem with this wonderful plan of yours, Arthur." He refuses to say more until they're standing in Mrs Herscovitz' rather spacious living room.

"First of all," Eames says, lounging on a settee as if he has all the time in the world, "You shouldn't feel bad about missing this. You were probably influenced by how lucid she was when you met her. It's perfectly understandable. And this," he gestures, encompassing both Arthur's preparations and Dom's work, "looks bloody perfect, but it's not good enough for the job. Arthur, you haven't taken her illness into account besides making allowances for forgetfulness and drugs."

"What do you mean?" Arthur asks, stilted, but this time Dom _can_ read the expression on his face. To his astonishment, his point man looks grateful, of all things.

"What I mean, Arthur, is that her mind, in my poorly phrased laymen terms, is essentially attacking itself. There's a possibility that the memory we're looking for is permanently gone. Also, we're really lucky she won't be our dreamer, because otherwise in spite of all Cobb's commendable efforts at sound architecture, there might be sudden gaping holes or just plain empty spaces. I don't exactly like the odds stating that might _still_ happen. Furthermore, we can't predict how her projections will react to our presence at all. She's not militarized, and she'll know us and on some level expect us to be here – there – but that won't necessarily translate to those parts of her mind that are already damaged. Hell, her projections might even be waging war against themselves."

There is silence in the room. Yusuf eyes Arthur and Eames warily. Dom opens his mouth to make a suggestion, but from the way the two are staring at each other, an interruption would not be well received.

Finally, Arthur starts nodding. "You're saying that the whole structure, the walls, floor, furniture, all of it, needs to be able to stretch itself over bits of nothing at all."

"Precisely. I, for one, don't want to find out where I'd end up if I had the misfortune to fall into such an empty spot."

"Can you do it?" Arthur asks without turning away from Eames. It takes Dom longer than it should to realize he's talking to him. Frowning, he stretches the settee until it bumps into the love seat and the opposing wall. Eames yelps.

"I think so."

"Good. Can you make sure there'll be no additional lapses to the ones we might find when we get there?"

"On the first level, yes," Yusuf says slowly. He, apparently, has no difficulty knowing who Arthur is talking to. "I can't possibly say about the second, not without doing a test run with the client."

"Which we can't do," Eames remarks before Dom can protest that they shouldn't.

"No," Arthur agrees, "the stress of one hookup will be hard enough on Mrs Herscovitz as it is."

"There's an upside to this, you know, even with projections that might do whatever," Eames says when Arthur gloomily looks at the oversized settee. He hops up and pats Arthur on the shoulder. Dom doesn't think he's imagining the look the forger slants his way. "At least we know."

Arthur's mood brightens considerably. "No surprises?" he says drily.

"No surprises."

::

::

Arthur decrees that they'll complete the job the following Wednesday. When Yusuf asks what made him choose that particular deadline, he replies, "It's Philippa's longest school day."

No matter what Eames might think of Dom at the moment – and yes, Dom now understands why he's on what he hopes is probation – he and Yusuf accept that answer without further question. Dom tells James' kindergarten teacher that he has a job interview and needs James to stay longer than usual. It's not even a lie.

Since the job should take less than half an hour in real time, they expect to be back an hour before Dom has to collect his daughter from school.

The only concern Arthur has is, "Is that enough time to perfect all three forges?"

By way of an answer, Eames makes Arthur and Dom follow him down again. "What do you think?" he asks in the voice of a woman in her forties. Dom has no idea to what degree the forge resembles Mrs Herscovitz' real niece, but he can see that she looks much livelier than the previous version.

"My love, I'm so sorry, I swear I put it away with your earrings," an older man's baritone implores. "Great invention, digital voice recordings," what Dom assumes is the late Mr Herscovitz confides in Eames' voice. Then, a woman younger than the first but out of another era, "I have seen you looking at it, wondering what is the history behind it. Come, sit down beside me, and I will tell you just as my favorite aunt told me."

She opens her mouth as if to recite the whole story, but Arthur holds up a hand. When Dom glances at him, he looks entirely unimpressed. "As long as we're here, I'd like to try to give this level a run-through with some of our projections," he states, seemingly ignoring everything Eames just did.

Dom recognizes the lack of criticism as an understated Arthur compliment, but he doesn't expect Eames to know that. Eames, however, doesn't bristle, only shifts back to himself and grins. "Yours, mine or Cobb's?"

They haven't really seen any projections during the tests they've done so far. Then again, they haven't left the house at all, and none of their shifting around the dreamscape has been something the others believed shouldn't happen.

"Mine," Dom says, when what he wants to do at the thought is to shoot himself out of the dream. It's worth it only for the certainty such a test will bring, and for the barely visible flicker of respect in Eames' expression.

"All of them," Arthur decides.

The next few minutes are chaos. The quickest way to anger projections is to harm their originator, so Dom is not surprised to receive a bullet to his leg. It becomes clear that someone will need to do sweeps of the unoccupied rooms.

No projections manifesting outside manage to barge through the door.

None of them are Mal.

::

::

Wednesday morning is a disaster. Philippa clearly senses something is up, and she refuses to put on clothes, eat breakfast, do anything at all that ultimately means she has to let Dom out of her sight.

"Sweetheart, come on, we're gonna be late," Dom tries for the third time, but his daughter just hugs her sweater to her chest and yells "No! _No! Nononononooooooooooo!_"

Unsurprisingly, it's not long before James starts crying, too.

Dom has dealt with nightmares. He has dealt with fights, questions about Mommy, questions about where Daddy has been. He has dealt with both Philippa and James being clingy and crawling into bed with him. It was a difficult year for all of them, which is exactly the reason why he had to take the time off. He thought he was prepared for easing into work again. Turns out he's not.

"I'll be there when school lets out," he says, hugging both her and the sweater and stroking her hair. This, after all, is the heart of the matter. "Me and James and Arthur, if you want, right at the gate, we'll be there."

"No!" She doesn't stop screaming, but abruptly, James does. When Dom chances a look, he sees it's because Arthur has picked him up.

"What's this, then?" Eames asks over the ruckus. Philippa is burrowing into Dom, ignoring everyone else in the room. Dom's knees are starting to hurt from the crouch.

"'lippa thinks Daddy is lying," James says from the safety of Arthur's arms, destroying Dom's hope that his youngest doesn't understand what's going on.

Dom would have expected Arthur to chime in. He knows the children best, after all. Instead, Arthur keeps holding James reassuringly, and it's Eames who declares, "Then maybe Yusuf and I should help Arthur help Cobb here to escort the young lady home, too. How does that sound?"

Philippa's screams die down to sobs. "Sounds good, doesn't it?" Dom whispers into her ear.

It still takes a few minutes until Philippa is calm enough to turn her head away from Dom's chest. "You'll make sure?" she asks Arthur, who has somehow onehandedly managed to fix James' breakfast.

"We'll make sure," Arthur says in a deadly voice that should, by all rights, scare little girls her age. Instead, it's the life line that finally allows Dom to lead her to the table.

If he weren't so relieved, he'd resent the fact that even his own daughter trusts Arthur's word over his.

::

::

Reaching Mrs Herscovitz' house takes less than an hour by smallish charter plane. Their current client's wealth is not comparable to Saito's in any way, but she's not at all short on money.

Dom tells himself that he's still rattled from dealing with a hysterical Philippa. He can't be nervous about the job, the plan is _sound_, even if it's not a plan Dominic Cobb designed.

Mrs Herscovitz turns out to be a rather sweet old lady who greets Eames like a favorite nephew and Arthur like a son. Something in the way she looks Dom up and down, though, makes Dom think one would have to be very foolish to cross her. "Only one architect?" she asks, peering through the window of the cab to see if another team member is hiding in the car.

"Arthur found we only needed one, after all," Eames says, gallantly offering her his arm.

It's the first time Dom hears about Arthur considering calling in Ariadne. He has to blink a few times against the unbidden and, ultimately, unjustified sense of betrayal. He's here, they're doing the job. Whatever reservations there may have been, he obviously made the cut.

The suspicion that crossing Mrs Herscovitz would be ill-advised is only strengthened when she recounts how she came to take steps to contact Arthur.

"I was so convinced Marie must have taken the necklace before her time!" she trills as Eames and Yusuf set up the PASIV. "We had a huge fight, she swore she hadn't taken it but I didn't believe her, I was so furious. I remembered this new technology my Zachary had told me about. So I thought, if she refuses to admit her guilt, then I'll hire someone who will extract the truth! I would have done it, too, if it hadn't been for my next doctor's appointment and this new prescription." Because it hadn't been Marie who'd been to blame at all, only Mrs Herscovitz herself or, rather, her illness.

They politely decline her invitation to a cup of coffee before they go to work. As Eames puts it, "We'd love to, love, but we wouldn't want it to rain."

"Of course, you're right," Mrs Herscovitz says and eases herself into a rather familiar loveseat.

"Are you comfortable, ma'am?" Yusuf asks Mrs Herscovitz and waits for her terse "Yes, sir," before he slides the needle into her arm. Although Dom knows Yusuf has practice hooking up older people to the PASIV, he's impressed that it only takes him one try.

"Ready?" Arthur asks.

"Ready," Mrs Herscovitz affirms.

"Ready," Dom and Eames echo.

Yusuf's "There you go" is the last thing Dom hears before he falls asleep.

::

::

The door to Mr Herscovitz' study is locked shut. "So much for the ideal version," Arthur murmurs.

They find Mrs Herscovitz folding clothes in her girlhood's bedroom, a young woman of seventeen with long brown curls and no inkling yet of what Alzheimer's is. Two projections are sitting at the kitchen table, deep in a heated discussion, not paying the intruders any heed. The structure of the dream seems sound. So far, so good.

Dom and Arthur hang back as Eames shifts into the frame of the young woman's aunt. Walking into the room, she's fiddling with a necklace Eames refused to try to forge before.

She's wearing it now, the real thing rather than a replica because looking up, young Mrs Herscovitz expects it.

"I have seen you looking at it," Eames begins, "wondering what is the history behind it. Come, sit down beside me, and I will tell you just as my favorite aunt told me."

_Many generations ago, there was a young woman, not a day older than you are now, who wanted to become a silversmith like her father and her brother. Of course, the men at the time wouldn't allow it, but her grandfather was fond of her and indulged her questions, and she observed and learned whenever she could. From scrapes of silver that she hid from her father and brother and a ring she didn't like the shape of, she made this one necklace._

_She fell ill, then. Before she died, she gave the necklace she had made for herself to her niece. And though the niece later had daughters of her own, she decided to give it to her younger brother's daughter in turn, and it has been passed down from aunt to niece ever since._

"Does that mean I will have this one day?" young Mrs Herscovitz asks, awed. Her aunt kisses her temple.

"Yes, my darling, it does."

::

::

The second level looks like a disaster area. Dom almost wishes they _had_ brought Ariadne for backup.

There are no empty spaces like Eames had theorized, but it's bad enough. The ceiling is mostly caved in and only held up by two walls. The furniture in the room is scattered about. All of Mrs Herscovitz' knickknacks are strewn around between splinters of wood, roof tiles and broken glass.

There are no projections in sight.

Worse, they're on unsteady ground, the floor shaking under their feet.

Dom and Eames share a look that says, _Oh, this is bad, this is very bad, but I'm not panicked, what about you?_ "Better do this fast!" Eames shouts, and Dom nods, doing his best to stabilize what's left of the house.

Mrs Herscovitz is standing at a broken window, looking lost but oblivious to the chaos around her. There _should_ have been a projection of her aunt talking to her, but it's likely buried under the rubble, if it ever existed. If Arthur had elected Eames to stay behind on the first level…

"Where is the necklace I gave you?" Eames-as-Auntie approaches their client, full of sorrow. Mrs Herscovitz stares at her with eyes full of tears and despair.

"I don't know," she whispers, voice barely audible over the ominous creaking of the walls. "I don't know, I don't remember, I don't know!"

"You do know," Dom says then, gently. There's no recognition when her eyes snap to him, but he's not her aunt. He's someone other than her shame personified. At the moment, that's enough to make her trust him. Still,

"I don't remember, I don't, I don't…" The ground starts trembling harder again.

"You had it around your neck," Dom disagrees as Eames-as-Auntie surreptitiously picks a calendar off the wall. "You had it around your neck, and you took it off, and you looked at it and studied it and remembered, because it's one thing you _can_ remember vividly, and then you thought that since it was such a precious memory you had to put it somewhere, somewhere safe, and you got up and you hid it."

If Dom hadn't spent years prying secrets out of people in their dreams, he wouldn't have caught the miniscule turn of Mrs Herscovitz' head. He has, though, and he does, and Eames does. She's not even aware of it, but she's ever so slightly turning toward the crumpled remains of a door that leads to the kitchen within the dream. Back in reality, it would lead to the one room they hadn't recreated for the dreamscape, the library full of books craving too many details.

For a short moment, something that must be the title of a book flashes on Eames' calendar.

"I don't know, I don't know," Mrs Herscovitz is still crying. The wall on the other side of the room crumbles down. _Shit._

Eames pulls Mrs Herscovitz into a comforting embrace, strokes her hair, "It's all right, it's alright."

Despite Dom's best efforts, the level is collapsing fast. Over their sobbing client's shoulder, Dom meets Eames' eyes and puts a silenced gun to his own head.

::

::

"We got it," he tells Arthur when he wakes back on young Mrs Herscovitz' bed. Before he's even sat up, Arthur is already giving Eames and Mrs Herscovitz a kick.

The projections in the kitchen don't like the shock that goes through Mrs Herscovitz when she wakes, even though it's the kindest possible method. There are also more of them now.

Dom is satisfied to see that while the second level was beyond him, he did construct a solid door.  
"Don't worry, this nice young man won't let those awful people in," Eames assures young Mrs Herscovitz. Dom almost chokes when Arthur, between peering out of the window and training a gun at the door, turns and _winks_ at them – chokes because he cannot tell if it's aimed at Mrs Herscovitz, the aunt, or Eames.

_View with a Grain of Sand,_ he repeats to himself. _View with a Grain of Sand._

::

::

They wake with Yusuf standing over Mrs Herscovitz, two fingers taking her pulse, a glass of water at hand. Sighing in relief at what he apparently finds, he gently pulls the needle out of her arm, and she lets him.

Eames, Arthur and Dom take care of their own needles and are on their feet within seconds. There is no real hurry and certainly no danger, but the job is still unfinished. While Yusuf fusses over Mrs Herscovitz, Eames starts packing away the PASIV. Dom writes down what is hopefully, hopefully the location on a piece of paper and gives it to Arthur.

Once Arthur is out of the room, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his totem, aware of Eames' eyes on him from his place by the PASIV case. He's surprisingly confident that this scene in Mrs Herscovitz' living room is taking place in reality, though. The weight of the top in his hand is enough. He doesn't spin it.

Trusting that Eames has the PASIV well in hand, he goes to make coffee. He could follow Arthur to the library and search half of the many bookshelves, but this is Arthur's job, Arthur's accomplishment, Arthur's moment of victory.

Making the coffee takes no time at all. The tea takes a little longer, but it's still been less than ten minutes when Dom sets the tray down where the PASIV sat before. Mrs Herscovitz is either very tidy or Arthur had taken an extensive look before deciding the shelves' content would be too much work to replicate. The coffee hasn't been poured yet when Arthur walks back in, carrying a slim hardcover book that turns out to be a collection of poems. Mrs Herscovitz takes it from him with shaking hands.

"My aunt could have read these in the original," she says, stroking a finger over the cover. Dom squints to read the name of the author. _Wisława Szymborska._ "She would have loved the idea of a Polish Nobel Prize Winner." Which maybe explains why Mrs Herscovitz' confused mind chose this particular book as a hiding place.

Mrs Herscovitz opens the book in the middle. There, nestled between stanzas and verses, is the necklace.

Despite what Dom saw in the dream, Mrs Herscovitz is not someone to cry. The joy on her lined face brings tears to his eyes.

Eames slants a look at Arthur, then reaches out a tentative hand. At her "yes, please" of permission, he fastens the slim silver chain around her neck. "You look absolutely beautiful," he professes, echoing the words he would have said had he impersonated the aunt at Mrs Herscovitz' wedding.

"It's exquisite workmanship," Arthur says.

Dom can only agree.

::

::

The sight of four grown men sitting on a bench outside a primary school elicits strange looks from passers-byes. This early – or late, compared to the classes that finished at noon – there are no other parents around. Only the addition of James, playing in the sand a few feet away from them and clearly resembling Dom, ensures that no one actually questions their presence.

"Do you think she'll refrain from using exotic hiding places now?" Eames asks as another mildly horrified elderly lady turns away from them. It's probably been on his mind since they left Mrs Herscovitz in her living room, talking to Marie on the phone.

"It's unlikely," Yusuf says regretfully. "Not right away, as stable as she is right now, but later on…" He drifts of, not wanting to finish the sentence.

Arthur glares at the pavement as if it is to blame for their lovely client's illness. "The necklace is safe," he proclaimes.

"How so?" Dom asks.

"I attached a transmitter and sent the receiver to her niece."

There's a shuffling sound following that statement. When Dom looks over, a hand is covering Arthur's.

Once upon a time, he would have been told before this moment.

No one questions Arthur's ability to procure a transmitter tiny enough to appear invisible to all their eyes.

Another pair of elderly women passes by their bench. Yusuf's cell phone rings before Dom can judge whether their disgusted headshakes are directed at Arthur and Eames or the sinister group made up of the four of them. They hustle away as Yusuf gets up and steps closer to James, talking to whoever in a language Dom doesn't understand. Swahili, if he had to guess. After all, Yusuf must have left _someone_ in charge of his den.

Eyes trained on his son, he tells the men who used to be able to trust him, somehow haven't lost _all_ their trust in him, "In the same situation, I can't say that I wouldn't do it again."

"I know," Arthur says. Eames doesn't say anything at all, but Dom chooses to take the lack of an outburst of some kind as a good thing.

For a moment, nothing can be heard but James' humming and Yusuf's exasperated foreign words. A car parks across the street and a woman leans against it, another waiting parent. Eventually, Arthur says, "You did well."

It's truly an outstanding compliment. Despite the fact that he couldn't hold the second level, Dom knows it's deserved. "So did you," he remarks, not trying to draw Eames into the conversation. "An extraction from a mark with Alzheimers – there's many people who'd have said it couldn't be done."

"I'm not most people," Arthur says, sounding so much like Mal whenever she took on a challenge, and at the same time, not like Mal at all. From Arthur's other side, Eames lets out a snort. Dom decides it must be affectionate seeing that he hasn't let go of Arthur's hand.

Inside the school building, a bell rings. Yusuf finishes his call and rejoins them as they get up from their bench. "I have to fly out tonight," he announces, not sounding all that happy about it.

"Amaya and Lenore Quentin would still like our help with their adoption," Arthur states in a hushed voice, not wanting to be overheard by other parents.

"I'll leave you a few vials." Yeah, definitely annoyed.

"Any chance you'd let me help setting the plan?" Dom asks.

"Are you ready to choose a new totem?"

Dom considers it. Earlier, he'd taken out Mal's top and hadn't needed to spin it. For the sake of honesty, though, "Not yet."

"That's your answer, then."

There's nothing Dom can do but accept it.

Children start trickling out the gate. Before he knows it, his daughter is shouting "Daddy! Daddy!" leaving a small cloud of dust behind her, careening into his leg. "You came!"

"Told you I would," he huffs, lifting her up for a proper hug. Behind him, he hears Eames pretend to whisper into James' ear:

"That's us, men of our words."

::

::


End file.
